(Newser)
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MySpace was overtaken by Facebook for the first time last month and without some serious innovation, Rupert Murdoch's big buy may end up joining Friendster in the ranks of the also-rans, Dawn Chmielewski and David Sarno write in the Los Angeles Times. The world of social networking moves at an unforgiving pace, the two note, and MySpace has been playing catch-up instead of leading, as its own initiatives tanked.

Missteps included an overreliance on a portal strategy—attempting to build an audience around entertainment content—while Facebook managed to hang on to notoriously fickle social networking users by adapting and absorbing aspects of upstart rivals like Twitter.
MySpace still has a hefty 70 million users, but the site is laying off almost a third of its staff.

Yes- you can surf Facebook- which offers a lot more than MySpace did- without your computer freezing on each page load.

Robert_Dada

Jun 17, 2009 12:54 PM CDT

Once again, evidence that Rupert Murdoch is out of touch with business strategy and his empire is sunsetting.

Yourself

Jun 17, 2009 3:21 AM CDT

lets not forget that the idea of having to make your own page look like a grade-6 art project of glitter smacked pictures wasn't the best seller. The idea that everyones page be different was a good sales pitch for uniqueness, but people hate going to a page and having to hunt for info, facebook kept it streamlined and the same for everyone. And lastly, the fact that facebook was about the people first and then the profit, as opposed to the media and content on peoples pages made a big difference